ROUND TWO: 10-rewind vs. 15-derelict

^{[click image to view matchup in full screen in a new window.]}

The Poets’ Challenge: Each poet is assigned a single word based on their bracket seed, ranging from 1 (intuitive) to 16 (seemingly impossible). Poets must write a kid-appropriate poem using the prompted word in under 36 hours. Once both final poems have been received, they will be pasted into the body of this post, and then the reader poll will be open for voting.

Voter Instructions: Read each poem as many times as you’d like. Then use the poll to express your preference. Votes are counted in real time and cannot be changed once entered. As a guideline for voting, consider the criteria on which the contestants on the cooking show “Chopped” are evaluated: presentation, taste, and creativity. Translated roughly into poetry terms, presentation might include technical aspects such as meter, rhyme, form/shape, etc.; taste might be the net effect — did the poem move you to laugh, cry, think, kill, etc.; and creativity might include the poet’s approach toward a certain subject, image evocation, clever wordplay, etc.

“This is awesome, where can I find more?”: All results and scheduled matchups, including a glance at the round-by-round writing windows and voting windows, are visible from the Live Scoreboard page. In addition, results will be tweeted from @edecaria as they become final.

Here are the poems:

10-rewind
The Battle Cry of Blustery Hill
by Kristy Dempsey

The wind whips wild,
attacks my kite; it soars
then dives, a free-for-all fight.
I tug it quick, rewind
the string, take up the slack
and send my kite winging back
to war with the wind:
Ascend!

vs.

15-derelict
Silence
by Allan Wolf

The pirate ship is derelict, abandoned on the sea.
The garden is deserted, blossoms withered into weeds.
The tire swing spins slowly as its lonely rope unravels.
The secret trail is thick with leaves. The quest is left untraveled. 
The jungle gym is choked with vines.  The tree fort stands alone.
Imagination moved away; the children have all grown.

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GET OUT THE VOTE. The average pairing in Round 1 generated 154 votes. For Round 2, our goal is to DOUBLE the average vote total for all matchups compared to Round 1 … that’s 300+ votes! Use the share buttons below and mention the madness wherever you go so that these poems reach more kids!>